


Our Sins the Only Sins

by NeoVenus22



Category: Sanctuary (webseries)
Genre: Alternate Canon, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-26
Updated: 2009-12-26
Packaged: 2017-10-05 07:10:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeoVenus22/pseuds/NeoVenus22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written pre-series.  Will returns from a mission, and Helen finds herself lonely for his company.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Sins the Only Sins

Will is dripping wet, the shoulders of his coat heavy, his hair matted to his forehead. For once, Ashley has actually listened to her mother and is upstairs, sound asleep. Helen's in the lab, and has for hours been ghosting her fingers over the tools that had served her so well in the past, but were now considered obsolete. She doesn't need to keep them as a reminder of who she was, or how she'd gotten there, but she keeps them anyway. And now Will is standing in the doorway, the wet sheen of his cheeks not hiding the lines around his eyes.

"Did you get it?" she asks, because she must think business, and not about the lines of his body, showcased in his wet and clinging clothes.

He shakes his heads, tiny droplets not quite making it far enough to splatter the wooden doorframe. "The device was gone by the time I got there."

"We're just going to have to figure something else out, then," she says, and morosely finds that her fingers have landed on the rusting scalpel. She shouldn't be having this moment of weakness until long after he's left, when it's just her and the endless, endless night, but she is anyway. There was a brief glimmer of hope when she'd first heard of the device, and once again, it's burned out before reaching its true potential.

"I'm sure we can," he says, waterlogged but earnest. She manages finally to drag her hands away from the ancient tool, but can't look Will in the eye. He doesn't know the blade has pierced her own flesh in what would have been a fatal blow, on more than a few occasions. Occasions where she has felt an emotion far worse than desperation. Will doesn't know that she gave up trying to end her life when Ashley was born (she knows she'll end up outliving Ashley as well, but she's going to make the most of their time together), but has not yet stopped from praying for death, for release, every morning and every night. He doesn't know this, but she does.

"Dr. Magnus, it was my fault." He's not the type to issue apologies so easily, but maybe she's looking a little more than broken tonight after the latest failed attempt. He sounds heartfelt. She wants to cry.

"It's not your fault," she promises him with a steady voice.

"You gave me the information, and I didn't act fast enough. Now that device is in the hands of who-knows-who," who-knows-_what_, she mentally corrects, because if she's right —and after more than a century, it's bound to occasionally happen— then whoever beat Will to the device most certainly wasn't human, "and it's my fault."

"These things happen, Dr. Zimmerman. It's happened to people before you, and it'll happen to people after you. We don't always win. It's all right."

"Will," he says quietly. At first she wonders if he's correcting a verb in her statement. He still hasn't moved from the doorway, nor her from her desk, but they've locked eyes now, shamelessly. "You can call me Will, you know."

She watches a drop of water fall off a twisted lock of short hair, and run the course of his face, from brow to cheek to jaw before she says, "Helen." Her chest feels alarmingly tight, so she says, "Do you need a towel?"

Maybe he knew what she was doing, and maybe he didn't. But he twitched a little around the lips, as much as he ever smiled when he was on the clock. "An umbrella would be okay."

"It's a bit late for that." Water has pooled off his shoes, threatening to ruin the hall carpet. She has never cared about housekeeping wherever she ends up living, so long as it's safe and warm and dry and her lab is intact. She only notices now because Ashley picked it out.

"I meant for the walk home," he explains, and she jerks her gaze away from the darkening floor.

"You're welcome to stay here. This place is too big for just us." She feels like a spider, beckoning him into her web. Will is not as smart as Jacob, or as adventurous as Maggie, or even as attractive as Ramsey, but since day one, there has been something in his eyes, something akin to passion, that drags her recklessly to him.

"I won't be bothering you?" he says very carefully, and she can't tell if he wants her to grant him pardon or condemn him.

"Not at all. Come on, I'll find you a room." There are at least two spare rooms where he can sleep and not bother Ashley, or vice versa. It's interesting that her last thought before passing him into the hallway is of her daughter asleep upstairs. Because the act of entering that doorframe with him is perhaps the beginning of the end.

Moving past him is too invasive, and takes too long. They're greedy, slow steps. She can feel his body heat, even through his damp clothes, and it enflames the part of her that refuses to die.

Will releases a murmur from the back of his throat, barely audible, and cannot put words to it. He has no need to; in that one low sound is anxiety enough for the both of them. Helen understands, and yet it's a force more powerful than life, more powerful than death, that closes the distance between them. He's her colleague, moreover, he's her protégé, and she kisses the wrongness of it, the forbidden, just as hungrily as she kisses Will.

He does not touch her with anything other than his mouth, though she can feel his hands hovering. The heart which has never stopped beating still belongs in part to Jack, but that is merely a dull ache, like a broken bone feeling the bite of winter. To let go of it entirely would be to deny who she is, or who Ashley is. Helen's never been the sort of woman to attempt to forget her past, but she does not know what she's attempting to forget as she melts against Will's body.

When he pulls away, the front of her sweater is wet where it met his jacket. He can't decide whether to be formal and chastising, or casual and foolish, and his indecision comes out as, "Dr. Helen."

He just barely runs his fingertips over the streak of red in her hair. New protégé, new hairstyle. This time she selected a vibrant streak of color, to emphasize the rebelliousness stirring in her gut the moment she met Will Zimmerman.

"There's a car if you want to go," she says.

He looks at her like he wants to stare her down, like he wants to challenge her, or worse yet, analyze her, but she is his boss, and it makes uncertainty flickers in his eyes. "Or there's a room."

"There's always room," she agrees.

"Do you ever sleep?"

"Not often." She doesn't mean it to sound coy, maybe the proximity of their bodies lends cadence to her words that isn't otherwise there. Maybe she wants him to analyze her after all.

"Working all the time?"

"There's lots of work to do." They're close, and she is almost trembling from the desire to touch him, to end the agonizing breaths of proximity. She wants to touch him, wants to rest her fingers on his belt, wants to peel the damp jacket from his shoulders.

"You can't do it all by yourself," he reminds her. "That's why you brought me on board." It is, and it isn't, and he probably knows it, and she's no longer certain she cares. She's already laid her cards on the table, after all. "I suppose so," she says, with cheer she doesn't entirely feel. "So are you staying?"

Her question had been fairly straightforward, but there's a wealth of subtext in his next word. "Yeah."

* * *

The following morning, Ashley is half-slumped over the counter, slurping at her oversized cup of coffee with obvious teenage exaggeration. Helen allows these moments; she knows Ashley didn't have the most traditional upbringing.

"Did you know Will's in the bathroom?" she asks idly.

"He stayed last night after his mission. Is there coffee left?"

"Dregs, mostly, but you're welcome to them."

"I suppose I'll have to make a new pot, won't I," she observes wryly. They are never lacking for coffee grounds; it's a tenant of Helen's personal philosophy. She wonders how many cups Ashley has consumed for there to be only a slosh left in the pot. "I'm sure Will is going to want some."

"You're being weirdly domestic." Ashley takes a pointed sip. "You weren't like this with all of them, were you?"

"Times change." She touches her hand to the side of the coffeemaker, feels it warming up. She has the memory of Will's hands hot on her. She wonders if last night marks the beginning of the end, or if it's just another thing she'll carry with her in the unending cycle of her existence.

"Mom? Mom." Ashley's voice is slightly more high-pitched when Helen is bearing the aftereffects of another sleepless night, and isn't properly placated with coffee, and it cuts through her thoughts and brings her back to the kitchen at present. "You're not listening to me, are you."

"Yes I am."

"Are you and Will..." Rather than bring voice to an embarrassing situation, she makes a borderline lewd gesture.

"Will's a colleague. I'm a professional." They are two sentences which fit neatly together like puzzle pieces, until closer inspection, when one realizes they're actually from different puzzles.

"Okay then." Ashley sounds like she wants to say more, like she recognizes the lack of connection between the two statements, but thankfully, she says nothing else. The silence is broken by the coffeemaker as it burbles its last few drops, and Helen pours some into a mug. With one foot still rooted in what they call the Victorian era, she doesn't take modern miracles for granted, like how quickly false consciousness and clarity can come to her.

The dark liquid, without cream or sugar, scalds her unprepared and defenseless taste buds, and burns hot and bitter down her throat. She's grateful. It's a distraction, one she continues to gulp until her mug is empty and her tongue is a little numb, and that's when Will walks into the room. His sweater and pants are fresh from a run in the dryer, his glasses hang neatly on his nose, and he smells like soap when he moves past her to get a cup of coffee.

He isn't treating her as though last night had made its mark on him. He doesn't hold himself carefully, he neither overdoes eye contact nor shies away from it. He is relaxed, at ease, tired from a long night. Ashley perhaps suspects nothing, but only because Ashley wasn't present last night for Helen and Will's stiff attempt at conversation. Had she been, she would notice the immediate change to the near-friendly nature of their idle morning chatter.

Helen has managed to endear herself to him, make herself a familiar. And Will has managed to bury himself in the crevasses of her brain. He's a distraction from her ultimate goal. He prevents her from thinking about the future. But at the same time, for a few moments —as he smiles his greeting at Ashley, and the corners of his eyes crinkle as he realizes his sip of coffee was a little hotter than he was anticipating— he worms his way deeply into her conscious, helping her to forget what she knows she can't change. Making her think that maybe, she doesn't want to.


End file.
